World of Farberge
by NuttersAscend
Summary: Tsuna falls victim to the hype of a new game called world of farberge, a VR game which personalizes what you can play as. Unfortunately, to take away that choice leads to some really strange situations. (revamped)
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

**Arrival into a new world**

Sawada Tsunayoshi was a rather average kid. He was a kid who saw his school as his arch nemesis having to struggle with its antics on a daily basis. His textbooks sometimes felt like they spoke Latin and Greek to him and Japanese was hard enough, he didn't need yet another language in his life thank you very much. Math felt like it was straight up Egyptian hieroglyphs with weird symbols and just like the aliens' conspiracies surrounding Egypt, it was being an utter alien to him.

He was very aptly nicknamed Dame-Tsuna, a nickname he very much didn't need. He was very much capable of making his own life miserable and didn't need anyone else rubbing salt in his wounds. Case in point, he, in spite of receiving borderline atrocious grades, decided to ditch the library, ditch the class study sessions, ditch the spread out, inviting, crisp smelling, gorgeous books on his table to opt for trying out a new game on the table.

What? Homework? What on earth is that? He would personally make buying a dog, his life mission to pin its mysterious disappearance on it!

On to more important matters...

The internet was currently crazily hyped about a game that was going to be released this day. It was a realistic virtual reality that was partnered with Gookle to provide players the most immersive world that characterized their personality. It was a fantasy sci-fi world that people could explore and thankfully, his dad's rare visits paid off this time with the old man bringing a headset and forgetting to take it back with him.

Oh well, finders keepers. He shall never know!

The brunette put on the helmet as the game booted up for the first time and he felt his visual perimeter change to that of what seemed like a character selection screen.

"Wonder what classes are available? They've been so hush hush about the whole thing. This better be good."

When he stretched his hand out, a bright light engulfed him as character suits with names on top of them swiveled around him. There was a paladin, mage, warrior, hero, archer, elf, thief...

They swiveled right past him, in fact, they looked like they were passengers in a train, headless ones...

"Hey wait! I can't select any one of them like this!"

"Precisely"

A mysterious voice echoed back an answer.

Tsuna looked at the last of the characters passing by and then shifted his attention to the spirit who he supposed answered him, his face confused.

"You seem to have forgotten, but the game developers have promised to give everyone a personalized experience into this world."

"What's the point in showing those then?"

"It was to show the stereotypical characters that bogged the MMO world! We wanted to show players that they did not have to walk fixed roads! They can be whoever they wanted to be!"

"Oh..."

"...Kidding. We just wanted to show you guys all the characters you can never choose to be! It's like bringing you to a castle filled with treasure, only to send you to a hut."

"Oi!"

"Well, what do you expect?! Us developers have put hard sweat, blood, and tears into this project! We're not even being melodramatic! In the years of developer hell and toilsome effort, many of our members put up a satanic idol and have started a ritual to appease their inner demons and make the computer gods have mercy on our spindly, creepily fast hands!

And then YOU people start spamming us with questions about classes! Classes! When we got the most innovative gameplay mechanism on our hands! Of all things, classes, and races! Have you even noticed the smooth fps?! Your hands aren't even blocky! And you're running this beauty of a game in a toaster!

It's like casting pearls to swine! Honestly!"

"Umm... Sorry...?"

"Yes, you better be sorry! The only way we will forgive you guys for breaking our hearts is by loving this game! Love our precious widdle baby! Love it!"

Tsuna was getting increasingly weirded out by the spirits. These guys have no chill. In fact, maybe they need a break from caffeine and offices...

"...So, how do you guys personalize experiences?"

"Are you curious? Well then, we can explain. We partnered with Gookle to gain access to the player's personal data, aka your internet history and the length you spend on each site, to say the least."

Tsuna paled immediately. He desperately had the urge to sign out this instance and delete everything right now.

"Nuh huh. No, you don't. We've censored any method you can inform the rest of you guys and we won't let you go until we get a character for you that you can never delete! Embrace your essence, Tsunayoshi. Love thy self!"

"Let's see what you say when you're the one subjected to this!"

"Don't sweat the details kid. We have good intentions."

"Oh my gosh. Wasn't Gookle's slogan 'Don't be evil'?! Don't tell me you hacked into their database!"

"The partnership was a true one, my fluffy tuna fishie. Google's getting something out of this too. Live logging of chats and behavior tracking of the players here."

"You guys are worse than that overly attached girlfriend or any yandere in anime. Where on earth is privacy."

"Six feet under. We buried it, muhahaha!"

"I swear, it's like computer-based companies want a worldwide orgy..."

"We always needed a variation from www. Now, enough chit chat. I shall reveal what you are destined to be!"

Drum rolls echoed as the room grew dark with spotlights circling them.

"You... could aim for the guineas world record for the most average being in the world. You're so normal a machine learning program would treat you as its master-"

"Drop it!"

"In fact, you are so mediocre in your tastes, even the more risque ones-"

"Please don't tell me you're doing this with everyone..."

"Want me to lend you some AVs kid? I'll show you a whole new world!"

"Don't ruin Disnay for me..."

"That's the path of being a true adult. Breaking all your childish dreams and wishes. We even let the AI speak the truth for the youngest of our guests."

"What truth shall you reveal, oh enlightened one?"

"Well you know, stuff life there ain't no tooth fairy picking up yo' teeth. I mean what kind of sick f*cker would even do that? A special kinda one if you ask me. Girl's got a weird ass fetish. At least she doesn't make a necklace outta it, like a war trophy."

"Sometimes I feel like the fairy tales people tell kids are pretty morbid."

"You haven't heard the last of it. Do you want to know about what happened to good ol' sleeping beauty."

"...I'll pass"

"Wise decision. Disnay and Pixor eat all kinda grime and sludge only to poop out rainbows for farts."

"Maybe you guys should cut down on the caffeine...?"

"Never! _MY PRECIOUS!_"

"And probably quit on binge-watching movies."

"Yeah... That's never gonna happen. So our algorithm has picked you... Villager!"

"That's an NPC! Quit screwing around!"

"Man... We were surprised too. Your sheeple level is over 9000"

"I don't even know if a villager can fight! What am I even supposed to do with it?!"

"You're so whiny. Fine then, we felt it was a bit unfair, so we tried to get you a second form."

"...And what is that?"

"A multiplying whack a mole based chicken."

"...Somehow I knew it was going to end up like this."

"Hakuna Matata"

"QAQ"

"Look you look like the very chicken you can transform to. You can even say, 'This is not even my final form' when you're a villager."

"Who on earth needs that for a final form?!"

"By the way, if you get hit enough times you might multiply enough to a million."

"Won't the server crash?"

"We figured there's no one jobless enough to do that."

"Well, I'm a very busy AI. So I'll leave you to exploring your new reality."

"I hope the door doesn't slam on you on your way out"

The brunette grumbled as he felt a floating sensation as he descended downwards to the world the VR game had to offer.

The World of Farberge


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

When in rome...

Tsuna could turn a blind eye to keep true to his denial that he was not a Villager. In fact, he spent the first ten minutes finding the option to hide his class from being visible to the players. After that, he strolled around only to be cheerily greeted by the town mayor like they were missing brothers.

The screen turned bright as a prompt flew right to his face, awfully attached to him, as he was prompted to give a name to his character, which he set as Tsuna. It was a brief version of his name.

He wasn't sure how he looked, but he hoped it wasn't his real appearance. That was begging people to cyber bully him and that can get out of hand fast.

When he was brought back to their reunion(?) The mayor slapped cheerily at his back and robotically called out his name. He had never been so scared of his own name before.

Sadly enough the five minutes of conversation with this chief was the most friendly anyone has ever been with him in his life (Do not bring up Iemitsu. Tsuna will snarl... like a kitten... a terrifying kitten)

He was curious about the type of players that would arrive here. He wondered if there were any other villagers, despite the conversation he had with the AI that implied otherwise.

When he moved around the town, everyone was weirdly familiar with him, giving him nicknames and were offering free stuff to the dude and recalling their history, babbling town gossip to him, ...even though they were at most cordial with other players...

Wait, could it be... Since they are also NPCs... and his class was...

So he was one of them?!

Well, he was a villager, but still!

Normally don't people have to interact a lot with the NPCs, give them a couple of gifts and all to make them friendly?

There must be another player who is an NPC. It's like he's the self-aware character here! He's human for petes sakes, last time he checked, he was very squishy with the meat and chubs from lack of exercise and hikkikomori life.

But he could also feel sensations from these guys. What does it even mean to be human? What is the meaning of life(42)?

His existential crisis had to be put into a pause as he decided to see if anyone else struck weird as in really apparent, neon bulbs arrow lit directed weird. He needed to see if there was someone else the character selection system decided to be vindictive against.

So he camped near the mayor and discovered not a new player in a few minutes, but a rather weird quirk of his character. His hand started clutching herbs that appeared out of nowhere, magnetically attracted to his hand.

It healed 50 health points and restored 20 mana.

After ten minutes with him getting distracted by the strange phenomena, his fist started overflowing with herbs and he had no bag to store them in. But when the herbs started to decide his palms weren't enough and started crawling into his chest, he lept into the air at the strange sensation and caught the attention of new player that just showed up.

What could he even say to appease those confused eyes from the, uh, witch doctor with a lab coat...? A bunch of grass molested me...? Those inquisitive eyes demanded an explanation, and he was weak against demands in general... So he tried to muster words to explain the situation;

But what came out of his mouth was,

"It's dangerous out here. Here, take some herbs"

Oh. So that was what this whole thing was about?

The other now looked at him strangely as he automatically moved to the other and started shoving herbs into his hands and then after looking at it for a while started looking at him suspiciously.

Tsuna wished he could crawl into a hole right then. He was a legit hikkikomori. This kind of friendly interaction was beyond him. So this was what it was like to have your body hijacked...?

Slowly, the other dude rolled the herbs and lit it with a flame while posing a cheers with him.

'This ain't weed dude!'

Too bad, the game disagreed as a prompt popped up saying he acquired 15 weed, quality 3.

'How did you even convince the board to rate this game as 15 above?! And how much of a weed connoisseur are you?! How do you even know how to rate that?!'

But it seemed like the rating lit up a fire in the dude as his eyes glinted at the challenge and to Tsuna's chagrin, his standing around summoned more herbs that he automatically shoved it towards the dude seeing that he converted all that herbs to... weed.

"Take this. You'll need it for the journey."

"Thank you herb sage. We can beat the system." a rumbling voice came from the dude.

Great, just great. He became a drug dealer with some random man in his teens. His mom is never gonna hear a word about this if he has anything to say about it. Maybe this was what his dad felt like... with how he tries to keep secrets despite being the world's worst liar.

He wondered what that made his kaa-san...

"Let's keep this a secret, yeah?" he asked timidly. Yeah, this kind of thing would attract negative attention, especially if this is being analyzed by gookle.

"You want a monopoly for the business?"

His eyes widened. No, he did not want to become a drug lord in this lifetime. How does someone infer something like that from what he said?

"I agree. Trade secrets gotta be well protected."

Don't move the conversation by yourself. What are you getting so excited for? Tsuna did feel a twinge of curiosity about what kind of thing the system could rate highly.

"Let's shake hands on this, partner. Name's Shamal"

"I go by Tsuna...?" he answered reflexively. Then his eyes widened as he accidentally sealed the deal as the other ran towards the town with determination.

Why did he even continue that introduction session?! There's no need to be that polite anyway! Well, at least he can forget that encounter and they can forget this ever happened... except, the AI level of the system considered them friends and put the dude in his friend list ToT

Later on, he came to the horrifying conclusion that every time he stayed still, herbs would flock to him and he had the stupid ability to transfer herbs through their _friendship link _to deliver herbs to Shamal.

The bad news didn't end there, he acquired the ability to prompt sharing his herb supply to anyone that met his eyes.

He felt like those tissue handers in the street. Sure they were free, but their intent was there and he had no intent to invite people to that side and change this cooky world into something even more ridiculous.

This was also a type of twisted pikemon trainer tactic. When you meet their eye...

Just when things seemed like they couldn't get worse, Shamal decided to gratefully _gift _back the finished product and then everyone saw the _potential _and we are talking about bored gamers that know that consequences don't apply in the virtual world.

Needless to say, their group session made things change, rather than an individual trip, it seemed like the world acknowledged the will of the mass and started changing the scenario to fit the situation...

This brought out Shamal from his mission to look awed at the scenario while Tsuna gave the environment a wry smile.

The Trees started coloring differently as they ranged from pink, violet, red, blue and indigo. Some of them wobbled, others warbled, the rest was dancing drunk. Some people were teaching the drunk trees the drunken fist style and then a crowd started assembling to see a makeshift brawl.

The sky seemed to be rippling with different colors like oil in water while Shamal gaped at the buildings that seemed to sprout wings and flutter around town.

The mayor started ascending to the sky as he shone gold and Tsuna spitefully wondered what would the town be like when it gets a hangover from this high.

His herbs seemed to be in a chipper mood than he was as it circled around everyone and anything finally bursting into confetti which transformed into fireworks that swam upwards like he swam when he tried a breaststroke. It looked like it was drowning a bit and he felt like he was the strange one for giving human characteristics to a firework.

Shamal quipped at the town's shenanigans,

"Maybe it would be better to rename this town as high town"

It seemed like the map agreed with that notion since it changed the name from beginners town to high town.

"You stupid people pleaser" Tsuna quipped back to the map.

Then as if to mock him, it also gave him a bonus and gave him the title 'Herb King'

It also leveled him up and told him his new skill was growing mushrooms on his body if he crouched in corners for minutes.

How generous.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**Escape from human to human**

There was a small silver lining for the brunette, as he had discovered after trying to solve some beginner quests in the _Beginner's town. _No, he shall not acknowledge that notification, even if he was the only one on this world to call it so. So, the beginner town quests were pretty much beginner level in difficulty, despite the huge makeover done to it. The town was forever on its bad trip and had no intention to get back to the real world and face real-world problems, like maybe, getting that hangover he was wishing upon it recently. Maybe it was due to the fact that Shamal had got some buddies who made it their life mission to get the town its catnip. Or maybe, they were just interested in seeing how much of a train wreck this town could get, you know, morbid curiosity. Either way, they decided to automate that process with a self-growing farm, automatic belts to a furnace...

Blacksmiths, Water mages and Plant mages who he had _accidentally _talked to, that is forced some herbs to, and stuck around for the shenanigans got as enthusiastic about this as Shamal did. They spent an entire week on this with random people chipping in cash and material. Tsuna wanted that to be a one-time thing, now it seemed like it was here to stay. Sadly enough, the one way the town could remain high town was if someone was feeding the flames 24/7 365 days. Luckily there weren't enough people to actually do that. But unluckily, the NPCs decided to pick up the slack so that _no wish would go unfulfilled. _There was a problem with this solution too. You see, the NPCs in beginner town were dewy-eyed, cherubic cuties. This was to bring ease to the players to get into a new environment. Now having those as accessories did not seem to match in any way. So the game world's solution was... convert them all to badasses. Now they look really hot for some reason and there are people in the internet making fanfics about them...

It was like these people had no other work or no other dream than to see drama or reality bend to its knees. Wasn't it enough that they were playing a VR game?! What, too realistic for you? It's like living in a world in a world so that you lived inside a world while it also lived inside a world. Worldception.

Apparently, magic was too mainstream for them.

But Tsuna did not have a complaint of that or this overkill of a situation. He had a problem with now, he was the only one here with dewy eyes and cherubic looks. He would _love _to look like sex on legs if there were any AI gods listening. It was not like he could easily leave the place either. It took a week for him to get a treasure bag, let alone get to the next town. The reason was pretty simple- he was a darn stupid villager! Villagers are the normal beings, the humans of this world and they are powerless.

The others he had gotten acquainted with had gone to the next village with things being too simple here in terms of tasks. The visuals are great and there are a bunch of interesting phenomenons here, but these are, in the end, the beginning village's characters. They are meant to be a friendly welcome to get used to the world. So the only one's here are those who are new to the game, at least as far as he could tell.

It was as if the real world had snuck up on him here with his character being the one he was in that blue earth he was a resident of. Once dame-tsuna, always a dame-tsuna. Even that welcoming feeling was gone with their appearances changing. It was like he was the odd one out, and his paranoia painted the villagers kind gestures as that of pity.

Out of frustration, Tsuna once tried to stop that stupid automation from working, by putting twigs in its cranks and pouring water on it to make it catch rust. If he ever managed to get it to stop, others would come by and make it work again. Well, that's the will of the masses.

In a way it made him feel like the town's mother in the way that it brought a righteous fury in corrupting his kid. In his spare time, he did the fetch quests and talked a lot with the NPCs. He was bored after all and the monsters outside could kill him easily. He couldn't use the herbs to restore health, because, in the end, people used the villager's herbs until it wasn't useful enough. The herb he generated had a long cool time and as people went on to higher levels, the herbs even if present in infinite amount weren't worth it because they took up space and the healing couldn't keep up with the cool time.

Tsuna did try a bunch of things to try dupe the system. He sold a bunch of herbs to the NPC shop keeper and then bought another shirt for himself. If those stupid plants needed to get into his bosom, they might as well get eaten by him when he fought for infinite health. Turns out, he moves in fights. Well, he has no area attacks after all! There was no weapon that he could equip since he has never ever seen villagers that could fight for themselves in games, not to mention, those weapons were the ones the supernatural heroes could equip. He even started looking at the villagers in a whole new light after seeing the bow snap itself out of bounds when he picked it up in the weaponsmith. The swords peeled themselves like bananas. To make the most out of that situation, Tsuna made an umbrella out of the peeled sword and the cloth armor that disintegrated into cloth when he tried to wear it. The metal breastplate broke into what resembled his heart, broken into a symmetric half. By the way, the shoulder pads melted into the ground. He had never been so terrified.

Once for some vindictive satisfaction, he very creepily placed his hand on the breastplate of a wandering warrior in the village. Needless to say, nothing happened but his face burning red in mortification. Oh, and his very beautiful role didn't fail to quip with "it's very dangerous to go out in the woods. Here take some of this, it will help you on your journey hero". In the village where he was, unfortunately, the only cutie pie, because of that strange sticking out that he was doing, he turned out to be the weirdo putting on a couple of lines a hooker would say. At least, the other's strangely red face when his fingers had run from his armor to his hands to place the plants in the other's palms while lingering for a few, added with direct eye contact and a red blush from mortification, it sure did _not _look like anything else for anyone who's less dense than a rock. Then like a delayed reaction from an acknowledgment from the server to get things steamy- the armor became just that- armor and not the dude's equipment. So it did what it did with him, melt gruesomely, killing every semblance of a mood with the manly dude shriek away in horror.

The whole video got recorded on to the official forum, and predictably went viral. Shamal could not shut up on it on the _one time_ the brunette wished the other went on his flirting escapades. Well then, there was only one thing Tsuna could do to remedy it, mute the chat.

While he was waiting for the situation to die out, he decided to give his luck a go. He wasn't losing anything anyway. So he wrapped the disintegrated cloth over his torso like a poncho while his villager's shirt was around his head like a Japanese thief. He did that to get the sneaky leaves into his mouth so that he could be invincible- albeit very uncomfortably invincible (He felt Koalas could have better times with their leaves than he ever could). It worked somehow, but he couldn't inflict enough damage to overcome the healing rate of the monster. It was a horrible caucus game.

So he decided to try his next idea since they both weren't going anywhere. He brought out a bow from his bag that was filled with what seemed like thousands of bows. He felt like that of a rich billionaire that could easily waste things because of his wealth. The herbs sale made him super rich after all, or was it the NPC shopkeeper who bought them tirelessly without thinking about supply and demand? All he had to do was keep the game overnight for the week and play when he was free and awake.

Though he couldn't move if he wanted to survive in the battle between him and the monster( the glorious slime ) , the bow could move for him - snap -, yeah, break for him. If he was a monster to bows from here on, so be it. Because the disintegrated slime in front of him showed that he could use this glitch to carry on forward, like a normal player, albeit one who is like a hamster with its pouch full of herbs and whose bags are full of bows. Maybe he could even do a lava attack by melting the armors over an enemy. It hadn't occurred to him until then that the villager must be weirdly strong if they could continuously give a herb to a traveler without moving anywhere for restocking. If only that strength could be used in something useful.

In fact, it made him slightly curious. So he whacked a nearby slime with the bag and it got instantly KO'd and then he felt like an incredible fool. All that was left was to find a way to get rid of being a hamster for keeping his life on him. So he tried making a paste of the herbs and mixing it with a bit of his villager cloth. Then he realized, he had been too greedy- as the villager shirt with a piece cut off became a normal dress-equipment somehow and disintegrated into cloth. Now he had a small piece of cloth chipped from the main 'shirt' that the leaves clung to like the couple on the last ice float in Titanic. Furthermore, since the shirt was no longer present, the pants became an incomplete part of the complete set, so it demoted itself to a normal equipment dress and voluntarily disintegrated. Tsuna felt that Hulk had it easier than him because now he felt like a streaker wearing only a cloak to separate the world from his full-blown naked glory birthday suit.

On the bright side, all he had to do was bite on to the tiny twig outgrowth clinging on to the cloth to recover enough HP to continue 'fighting' the monsters. On the brighter side of things was that once he leveled up, the cloth decided to grow a tiny bit, no scratch that, the outgrowth decided to grow a tiny bit along his face to get itself comfy- since it seemed to realize that it was going to have a long relationship with his face, so it might as well get very comfy and grow like a creep all over his face, more like form like a 3D tattoo across one of his cheeks.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**Unintended usage**

Now that Tsuna joined the ranks of players, well noob ones, he could finally explore the outdoors and not be cooped in a place with hotties. Maybe he wasn't suited for harems... Leaving that aside, he had no special moves except snapping a bow at some random monster. It was pretty much melee and he had one area of attack if you can call it that- throwing his last line of defense and offense- his bag, at his enemy... Yeah, people won't want him in teams, especially since he won't ever meet their eye. There was another reason he did not want to meet anyone's eye since now every eye meeting would follow up with herb distribution which was bad since he was kind of famous for melting an armor off after the supposed seductive lines. He _was _not catfishing. He _is _not catfishing!

But now those lines bring trauma to both him and his _victim._

So he was wandering around in the forest, playing solo even though he died half the time against any non-melee attack until he anticipated it and chewed on the leaf. It is not bubblegum and it feels weird to chew on leaves, especially when there is a green glow when restoring HP and he is pretty much a firefly with that attracting more monsters to his location. He is currently a glorified glowstick.

Through his journey to the second village, he discovered that his title was no joke and that the game was forcing him to own up to it and even live up to its connotations when he saw something strange. There were flowers and herbs lying around in the forest as resources for potions, medicine, and strange concoctions. With his profession and his stupid achievement, he supposed he was desired to keep at it and probably collect those. Well, if that reasoning didn't apply, he wouldn't have to pause when another bunch of plants lay at his feet after harvesting itself. It even went so bad that when he turned back he saw that he was walking on a path of flowers giving him that look of a divine beauty who descended into the mortal world. He did not want to stand out anymore! Just because he was a villager didn't mean he had to pick all the herbs in the world. No, he did not want to catch 'em all!

Being peer pressured by flowers and not wanting to walk on a makeshift flower meadow, especially since it left an obvious trail to be sought out by monsters (no wonder he felt like there was a dartboard drawn on him!) he started picking up the herbs around the way. The worst part of this was that if he stopped and left some herbs out of the bag since he did not want to carry junk around, a violin would sprout of a nearby tree and the leaves would shift to create a spotlight on that bunch (Tyndall effect for those who are curious about this phenomenon). It would then begin to play sad ballads to guilt trip into taking them back. Worse, if he left the place and hardened his heart, they would trail behind him like ducklings... He did not remember becoming a parent and did not want a demotion from the label a certain prefect gave to the majority of the citizens of Namimori. For goodness sakes, he became the fodder and the last time he checked, villagers did not play any role as important as cannon fodder!

The next village was a haven for him. It was called clockwork town and had no semblance of anything green. He did not expect a game to turn him anti-environmentalist for sure. So he decided to stick around to build immunity and to went out frustrations he decided to head to the tavern where he could emulate the life of an adult and wallow his worries in beer. Hey, it was virtual, so it carried no harm.

* * *

To his surprise there was already someone who looked as miserable as he was, seeing that his head was smashed into the counter. Eager to commiserate together, the brunette joined him on the counter and inquired,

"Rough day?"

The blonde in baggy green clothes replied,

"Rather than that, I was simply lacking in sugar."

"I don't think the tavern has sweet stuff looking at the menu."

"I was hoping it did seeing that the medicine the NPCs give aren't sweet and I can carry only so much dango from the first village."

Since the first village became a center of amusement for a while, people with chef professions and hobbies stuck around a little bit to accompany the scene with good food for a great party. So this guy might have stocked up on that as much as someone without his unique circumstances could.

"Medicine has a reputation for being bitter and when you're in combat I doubt the taste comes into question since people did not complain so far about the fighting."

"In my case it's different. The character creation system found that I liked sweets so much that it made me a mechanic whose creations ran on sweets."

"So you had to taste them to determine if they could be applicable..."

"The bots we can summon are more primitive than what I can actually create so I didn't want to share the sweets with them."

So this guy was into the field as a professional. No wonder he would find the choices game developers could give him be insufficient. But wait...

"So you've been eating them instead?! Then how have you gotten here without your actual weapons?"

"In the beginning, I had fueled the turrets and mines they gave. I was so jealous that they could eat the sweets instead of mine back then. So I figured that if I modified them to become what I actually want, I wouldn't mind... that much... to share them."

"You can modify them?"

"Yeah. I stacked them up and dissembled some with the help of monsters. The final product was a mecha suit like Gundam-"

"So that robot in the beginners' town was real?!"

"Wow, people still call that town beginner's town? Anyway, yeah. The catch was that to become usable it needed a human cockpit."

"Why was that a problem. You can just be the pilot."

"The prototype needed a person with the knowledge to run the bot with its various controls, and I wasn't willing-"

"Why?!"

Even though it was Tsuna's dream to become a robot when he grew up~!

"I like inventing new things, but it's a pain to actually use it. It's fun when you can debug a system for its errors and see what it can do, but actually using these high-end devices require training and stuff like a fast reaction time along with fast dynamic movement.

I would rather use that time for developing new things"

"Then you can sell or rent the system to someone else, or even better, a teammate." Tsuna grumbled

"Yeah, the thing was when I got some people to try it out, they couldn't remember even a quarter of the instructions and when they tried to learn by experience, the bot flew off course into that floating mayor and fused with him."

"Wait! That angel turned mayor became a mecha?!"

"I guess so. Anyway, the first Gundam depleted all my resources, so I decided the second one could use the sugar in a person's body since I figured carbohydrates was pretty much sugar.

But the thing is, the amount of sugar needed to power up a bot about 40 times your height was quite a lot and ended up sending the next pilot to a church in the first second."

Tsuna looked at him horrified.

"So I decided to christen it Iron Maiden. Unfortunately, it was never used since I didn't get any more volunteers to pilot it..."

It was like listening to a train wreck because Tsuna felt that this was not even the beginning.

"Since the first transformer used more than 95% of my sugar supply, I was not happy with the share it left me. So I decided that a simpler navigable bot would need more resources and processing power to power that bot and seeing that since the power would have to be somewhere between the first and Iron Maiden-chan since it couldn't be totally powered by people or totally power itself, it needed another source of power.

So I decided to use the monsters that was lurking around in the forest to power the Iron maiden to see how much power I didn't have to supply from my side. Since the monsters respawned in the same location as it was killed I thought by repeatedly killing it, I could make an evolutionary model that could simultaneously emulate an AI while powering the system...

But I couldn't figure out why but they were very hostile to the pilots"

'No shit Sherlock! You create a battle royale system and hope that their generations don't curse you for their deaths! It's like that urban legend Kodoku'

(Kodoku(worm toxin) is an urban legend about a black magic technique where you trap poisonous insects in a jar where they have nothing to feed on except themselves. The final remaining insect is the winner that people use to bless the building it was buried under at the price of its residents' lives)

* * *

"At this point, I had shelved the Iron Maiden to create another with the help of some pals I've got acquainted with when building the bot."

"Pals?"

"Yeah, a bard, an alchemist, and another mechanic."

'A bard seems so out of place in a robot creating team'

"Yeah, I don't know why he's a bard either. His music is worse than a cat shrieking while scratching a blackboard. But anyway, the mechanic of the team is a strange one. I don't know if he's careless or his way of thinking is just that strange, but his inventions always have some or the other defect in them. But since they don't require sugar to be powered on, I asked him to mass manufacture parts to work with."

"Isn't that great! Now you don't have to worry about being without a weapon."

"The weapons I could create from the parts are as flawed as his. I think it's a joke the character creation system accidentally created."

"Come on, how bad can it be?"

"As bad as ending up with weapons as powerful as an atom bomb."

That isn't bad at all, just that you need to fire it from a long distance else... Oh.

"Or as bad as creating a knife fitted rifle, with the knife at the trigger."

Tsuna winced.

"Or maybe a gun that uses the user's life bar as ammo and disables the use of any HP recovery items or magic?"

"Why can't you design them without these flaws?"

"Like I said, the program isn't exactly a simulator program for robots or any type of an ROS-"

"What?"

"Robot Operating System. Those enable modular software programming into robots along with debugging and logging of their functionality, so it would be helpful. But since it's fixed here, I've got no choice but to reverse engineer the finished products while hacking it to make it work against its functionality. Not to mention for really interesting bots to work with, you'd have to grind your levels..."

"Ok ok. Enough of the jargon. Basically, you can't go against the traits of the original owner yeah?"

"Not to mention that I love my sweets more than the robots can ever appreciate them QAQ"

Tsuna remembered that a movie series used to have these really gross instruments that pretty much was torture porn with bad mechanisms that were a hack. It even had a mastermind who had a bad hobby of playing these 'games' with the 'players' as a literal puppet despite being the puppetmaster.

"Then how about you give the weapons created by these parts to the monsters?"

"Oh, I see. Since they have an auto-equip mechanism with weapons when unarmed, they can die using them."

"After all the captain sinks with his ship, yeah?"

The blondie's eyes glinted as he reached out for a handshake.

"My name's Spanner. What's yours?"

"Tsuna. Nice to meet you."

"The pleasure's all mine."

Then a notification pinged in his screen as the mechanic was added to his friend list.

* * *

"Now that I can see a way to combat without actually losing my items since they'd at the very least become monster drops when the battle ends... I wish there was a way to have sweets. Chefs don't really stop by here..."

"A clockwork town wouldn't have much appeal to a person who works with living ingredients."

"Say, aren't you a herb king? In that case, you might have a bunch of fruits. Some of them are bound to be sweet."

"Let me check."

Tsuna opened up his inventory and cycled through the plants he had gathered seeing clary sages, grass, dandelions, is that a cactus? What was a cactus doing at a forest?!

Oh! There were... oleanders -pink flowers with the description that they were sweet smelling and sweet tasting. And now there's greek mythology mentioning something about snakes and them. It was too long for him to spend reading, so he skipped it.

"I've got these... oleanders. It says they're flowers with a sweet taste. Is that fine?"

Spanner's eyes lit up in delight as he eagerly brought his hands forward to accept them. Tsuna emptied his entire supply since he did not fancy its color and wanted to get rid of his entire stock... but he'd take what he could get.

The mechanic impatiently took a bunch of flowers and started munching on them, then his frantic excitement morphed into the picture of calm. He looked like a goat this way, his vitality hidden as he seemed to carelessly sift through life. Or was it a cow and its cud?

Regardless, he was so in peace with the food that Tsuna did not even realize that the other had the poisoned status and his health bar was depleting rapidly with every bite. Only when he started sparkling, the brunette felt something was wrong and shrieked at the unpleasant surprise.

It was too late and the other was teleported to church and Tsuna rushed out of the tavern while sending a world message,

'Does anyone know what exactly is an oleander flower is?! My friend died out of poisoning from eating them!'

A reply came back from a person called S. as they said,

'It could be a case of Oleander poisoning which you get by eating the flowers or leaves or stems of the Oleander plant. People can get blurred vision, diarrhea, stomach pain, vomiting, headache, rashes to say the least from them. So you shouldn't be eating them. Not to mention, the snakes that eat its fruits may secrete poison through its scales or through its bites... Though it's a game so it won't be that severe. Doesn't the description of the plant before you pick it have an outline of blood red? The text was a matching red too. You should have heeded the advice and not picked it. Red is a color symbolizing danger, you know.'

It's not like he could help it given his profession you know?!

When he reached the church he spat out whatever the person in the world chat said and apologized profusely. The warnings seemed to fall on deaf ears though since Spanner did not show any indication of stopping his activity of chewing the flowers.

"Oh, they were poisonous? No wonder the screen was tinting red and everything was a bit hazy. Oh well, it's still sweet though."

"Spanner-san, stop eating them. I might have other non-poisonous plants that may be sweet."

"It's fine herb king. These are good enough."

These were the last words as the poisoned(again) mechanic got sent back to the same place. RIP Spanner. He did not die of diabetes at least. But his love for sweets did spell the end of him.

"Oh look. I got poison resistance as a passive skill."

That was the statement the sweet lover uttered after going through the cycle of rebirth 30 more times as any words of dissuasion fell on deaf ears. Tsuna, on the other hand, was not happy with the achievement he got from the ordeal.

'Mutiny'


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

**Ambition vs Ability**

Tsuna felt that his forced affinity with herbs was more of a liability than an advantage since it brought so much trouble with it. Shoichi's constant deaths were something suspicious enough that it brought a friend of his over to see what it was all about. Judging by the suspicious look his red-haired friend threw him when he arrived, the brunette figured that the other thought _he_ was the one harassing his blonde friend when the title _he _was given was plenty harassment on his behalf he would suppose.

But on the sight of the oleanders that was somehow safe to eat now that the mechanic developed poison resistance under how resilient he had been against the brunette and the system, he supposed the system gave up on the other and just gave him the ability so they could all just go on with their lives.

Looking at the red head's name, S., the guy who knew about the plant in a great amount of detail he was surprised he was a bard not a witch doctor or something. The redhead said,

"Well, they say that those who engage in herbology were either doctors or poison masters being the sides of a coin.

Oh sorry about that. I just remembered that about medicine in the olden times when I saw your title. My name's S. and I suppose we're acquainted over your question in the world chat. Spanner's got you into a lot of trouble, sorry about that."

"No, it was my bad. I did not realize. The description was too long for a cursory read."

"Each of the items has a really long description here since most of them have some semblance to a real-world object.

Botanical plants have a lot of mixed effects and it's usually a bad idea to eat anything without prior knowledge. And most poisons usually lead to skin irritation or indigestion leading to organ failure. You don't even die fast and it takes days or even months to find the root cause since it's not a common cause that can be tested."

"Yeesh. Talk about nasty."

"I doubt even plants like to get eaten 'til their extinction unlike how giving people usually describe them in literature. The arguments to go vegan doesn't really hold when you bring up the plants' defense mechanisms.

But like I say they're outlined in red, so you've got to be careful when selecting them. Too bad the indicator vanishes when you pocket 'em. Why did you pick them in the first place given the limited storage capacity? Is it that thing? Like how you can make medicine out of even poison?"

The bard asked curious of how this situation even came about wondering if his friend would go so far to accept the herbs if he knew beforehand if it was poison. He hoped not. It was like the world had a vendetta against sweets if a person had to go that far to satiate a sweet tooth.

"It's not that complicated. It's 'cos of my profession that I'm forced to pick up any and every herb. I don't even remember which is which. My biology grades in my real life is proof that I shouldn't be stuck with this quirk in the first place."

"The character creation system is quite buggy isn't it? I mean in Spanner's case it's too perfect of a match to make him any satisfied with the progression. His alliance with Doremon-"

"What?"

"Oh, not the actual robot cat. He's our friend, another mechanic."

"Oh, I see."

"He liked the concept when he got roped into Spanner's Japanese anime time. It's a modification of the actual name since the system didn't accept the real thing."

"The game's got weird limits on things, seriously. When Doremon, Spanner, Millefiore and I worked on Iron maiden- man, I still can't get over his naming sense. Just because you modeled the robot after a Japanese maid doesn't mean you can name it an Iron maiden. When Millefiore and I added the genetic algorithm based monster AI to the bot on Spanner's request and what it did to the pilot's, that name had an entirely different meaning!"

'I totally get it, bro. I was wondering about the name too!'

"At least it's shelved for now."

'It feels awesome to have another person with common sense... Wait a minute, going by Spanner's conversations. Isn't this the guy he couldn't believe was a musician?'

"What's the matter?"

'But how can someone ask are you the bard who can't do his job properly.'

Noticing the brunette's suspicious stares at the redhead's instrument, the other huffed in understanding.

"Spanner must have told you something about my skills."

'Yes, that they were nonexistent.'

"That guy doesn't even listen to classical music but critics every time we go hunting."

"What do bards do anyway?"

"They have a support role. They can decrease the aggro against the boss, increase offense and defense of the party even reduce the cooldown time, to list some of them. But the monsters around here are really tough having high offense and defense that suddenly go down at the last health points, luckily, since my mana gets completely depleted by then.

Those guys aren't that great at managing aggro also, lately, I feel that Millefiore is purposefully aggro-ing them. His personality is _quite beautiful _after all."

He quipped sarcastically.

Tsuna, on the other hand, gave a wry smile at his words.

'In other words, this guy's musical skills are so bad that the effects are opposite to what they are actually supposed to do. Man, they had one job...'

"I don't know what Spanner complains about honestly..."

"Say, I've got something that got me curious. You seem to be well knowledgeable about other subjects than music"

'More like why weren't you something like an alchemist or a mad scientist than a bard? So much so that the only version of Beethoven you seem to be is a deaf musician who plays like one who is tone deaf...'

"So is it like you're part bard, part something else?"

"Hmm? No, my main and only role is a musician."

"Then how?!"

'Cos that knowledge has to come from somewhere and I refuse to believe that it's coming out of your ass.

"When you figure out how they collect data it's simple enough. For information regarding music, I use my internet and gookle things and bookmark, order instruments, see videos regarding instruments and record videos of me playing instruments on my channel, which will blow up in the future. I just know it!

Anyway, the videos, picture, audio, and texts I post and communicate are used to train neural networks and mined to get necessary features for training AI systems. By focusing on the field I'm most interested, I'm _understood _as a person who is musically inclined."

'But perhaps your recordings gave your real skill away...'

"Then what about when you want to do non-musical activity?"

"Then I can use another network say a public network in a library or a cafe. As long as I don't use my credentials or account details and use the websites with fake information in multiple accounts for other aliases, I can emulate different personalities.

If I have to use my own network, I can use a VPN to assume another identity, since a private VPN doesn't disclose someone's identity for their commercial gain unless the situation is desperate. You can even use an onion browser like Tor to use a network through multiple networks to keep your information strictly confidential and even using search engines and websites that don't collect information and are reputed by peers in that aspect.

After all media literacy is all about verifying your source's say, reputation and reliability; and seeing the different sides of a topic to prevent censorship due to say ownership along to say the very least."

Seeing how the other nonchalantly said all these proved something to the brunette, yes it proved how paranoid a person could be and this was probably his paranoia on a surface level...

The extents a person would go to protect their privacy...

The extents a person would go for sculpting how the world sees them...

It was ironic how it forced open his shell to the world the instance he was brought to the character building system and how it forced his intelligence to outshine his musical skills.

It also showed Tsuna a sad truth. The fact that no matter how skilled a person could be in something, sometimes the bitter-sour lemon filled truth life gave was that they would be hopelessly and passionately in love with another.

Maybe that lemon also blocked his mouth from telling a truth to free the other from an unrequited cycle of suffering, the story of Sisyphus, to always fixate on reaching the top with a burden of a boulder on an endless, fruitless journey. One that the redhead's comrades along with him chose to betray the guy by choosing to stay an observer, to see through a story of opposing fate, even if a couple of utterances can unravel the blinds over his eyes and to see the easier path.

Tsuna said,

"The game's idea of a joke is quite sick."

"You said it!"

_Beethoven_ agreed wholeheartedly as he nodded seriously, thinking he found another victim of the game that could empathize with.


End file.
